"Quiet now! Stand still!" Blaine ordered sharply.
He stood listening, with the quiescent, blankly staring Ratan before him. Had Ratan's roar of startled anger aroused any guards out in the corridor? It seemed not. There was only silence.
"Now we will go out of here," Blaine said softly. "We will go out. You know where Robert Rance is now. You will lead me to him."
With hands outstretched, the big Radak moved to the door, slid it open. At this moment Shorty and I were confined in another cave-cell not far away. Ratan knew it; he was leading Blaine there. But suddenly, at a corridor intersection, voices sounded! Radaks were coming.
"Crouch down!" Blaine commanded. "Be quiet! Not a sound from you!"
There was a wall recess. Blaine shoved his numbed captive into it. Together they crouched. And now Blaine saw that in a sheath at Ratan's belt, there was a knife. He drew it out; held it in his other hand and kept the cylinder ready. Two Radaks were coming. They were talking together in their own language. They stopped nearby, evidently with the intention of parting here at the intersection.
Blaine listened. Then he whispered to Ratan: "Answer me softly. What are they saying? Tell me in English."
"Those Earth-people banished—into the Realm of—Deathless—Monsters—and they will die—of course." Ratan's words were mumbled, queerly mouthed, like one who talks in his sleep. Blaine assumed that all of us were out there on the upper surface, not just Vivian and Mack. Swiftly he changed his plans.
"In a moment when I command you," he whispered, "you will lead me there. You know where the Earth-people would probably be now? Out which exit they went? Answer me—softly."
"By the—big cliff with the—rock spires.... The exit is—down this left corridor."